lent ; and Christianity is further charged with being a religion of
pain, a religion which has increased the sum of actual, and the
expectation of prospective, pain, darkening the shadow that lies
on our race. In answer, he considers, first, animal pain, and then,
more fully, human pain. Vast and awful as the suffering of ani
mals is, several things must be considered, or we shall be likely to
give undue importance. Strongly as the mass of animal suffer
ing affects us, we have not sufficient knowledge about it and the
life and destiny of animals to found thereon any valid argument
against a belief that is a verdict of reason from complex and cumu
lative proof. With human suffering the case is different, for here
we are in a measure behind the scenes. Can we find in the mys
tery of pain meaning, and what ? We answer, what few deny, that
moral evil is an ultimate fact for us,. in our present state, that can
neither be explained nor explained away. S And, secondly, we as
sume, what the hedonists alone dissent from, that character, and
not pleasure, being, and not feeling, or the greatest goodness of the
greatest number, is the primary end of ethics. So, the problem of
practical ethics is the formation, of character in, the face of moral
evil. In effecting this, pain and sorrow have an office which no
other known agency could possibly fill ; having a manifold effi
ciency as punitive, as purgatorial, and as prophylactic agency.
Such is a very condensed summary; the reach and power of the ar
gument can be obtained only from the full essay.
The bearing of the problem of pain on faith in God may be con
cisely stated as follows : There is a large amount of complex and
cumulative evidence from many departments of life and thought
all converging to support as a verdict of reason the belief in a God
omnipotent and benevolent. The existence of pain seems to nega
tive the coexistence of these attributes. But in a universe where
moral evil does exist and in which the highest character is to be
developed, the purpose, the necessity, and even the beneficence, of
pain are so apparent that its existence in nowise contravenes belief
in a Creator and Ruler at once omnipotent and benevolent.
Thus, if there is to be any controversy of the existence and at
tributes of God in Christian theism, it must not be based on the ex-